Days at college are special. They are the in-between years of what you are and what you will be. And for a budding writer at Delhi University, these in-between years were spent observing and imagining situations, environs and characters that is Day Scholar. In protagonist Hriday Thakur?s own words, ?I was training myself to observe better, to notice things only a writer would… I was training myself to look at everyone as a potential character?? And in a story that winds up in 160-odd pages, Siddharth Chowdhury?s effort to do just that is quite evident. For Chowdhury, who himself read English Literature at Delhi University, it would have been obvious to write about his days at the university and the slew of colourful and interesting characters, as well as situations that anybody who has spent time at DU, studying or otherwise, could easily relate to.
This is the story of Hriday Thakur, who comes from an upper middle class family in Kadam Kuan, Patna. His ambition to become a writer brings him to DU, where he goes through a roller-coaster ride in his first year of college, learning and unlearning more than he could ever apprehend. But more than the classrooms and the college campuses, the book dwells in the surroundings that form the fringes of DU?s North Campus and an ecosystem in itself. Shakti Nagar, Kamla Nagar, Maurice Nagar, Batra Cinema, Majnu ka Tila and other locations are the many cradles of the story. Then are those interesting, yet ever so familiar characters that one might have bumped into during one?s college days. Zorawar Singh Shokeen, the half jat-half Gujjar owner of Shokeen Niwas, Hriday and his Kadam Kuan friend and accomplice Pranjal?s crib in Delhi. Shokeen is a political broker and a shady property dealer. Then the scrawny Jishnu Sharma, Shokeen?s Man Friday, who arrives in Delhi to prepare for civils like scores of students from Bihar but never goes on to do anything about them. And a host of other stereotypical DU characters that keep the story readable and enjoyable, injecting life and nostalgia into the narrative.
And talking of stereotypes, this book is loaded, perhaps because DU itself boasts of this attribute, which on one end could be extremely humorous, while being crass and dismissive on the other. Civils are the ?national pastime of Bihar?, while those from Bihar who held on to DU, and never went back home to Bihar and neither cleared the civils, are the ?Danasurs? and ?relics of the past?, and Shokeen Niwas has 12 rooms, ?four on each floor. Usually two or three boys in each room. On weekends more as friends from the hostels of Ramjas, Stephen?s, Hindu, Hansraj, Kirori Mal would join in from drunken revelries?. From Navy Cuts and Gold Flakes, to chai and banta at the Jai Jawan Dhaba on Chhatra Marg, and from NSUI and ABVP election campaigns to a khamba of Old Monk rum, things couldn?t have been more DUish.
Yet, one feels that the story is inconclusive and the end is hurried. While the narrative lingers on for most of the book without any evident plot whatsoever, a plot suddenly comes from nowhere in the last couple of chapters and before you know it, the story is over. The book is breezy and enjoyable for being laid back and full of DU anecdotes that take you back in time, and it is not convincing or satisfying for the very same reasons. At times, the best thing about a book is also the worst thing about it. But then, if Chowdhury chooses to tell his DU story this way, so be it. For, DU was long waiting to be written about?about its people and places and culture, and everything else in between. The book has come a little late, one would say. It?s a pity that the story does not reach the summit it promises. Enjoyable still.
